Parasites of a marine benthic fish in the Southwestern Atlantic: searching for geographical recurrent patterns of community structure

VALES, DAMIÁN GUSTAVO; GARCÍA, NÉSTOR ANÍBAL; CRESPO, ENRIQUE ALBERTO; TIMI, JUAN TOMÁS

PARASITOLOGY RESEARCH

SPRINGER

Lugar: Berlin; Año: 2010 vol. 108 p. 261 - 272

0932-0113

Parasite communities of Raneya brasiliensis aredescribed and its parasites used as biological tags todiscriminate its populations. Fish were caught in twozones of the Argentine Sea: one sample from San JorgeGulf (Patagonian Region) and three samples from off thecoast of Buenos Aires (Bonaerense Region). A total of 183fish were examined for parasites and 11 species werefound. Host body size and its ecology are pointed out asdrivers of the paucity of taxa found. Multivariate similarityanalyses allowed the identification of three stocks: one inthe San Jorge Gulf, and two other in the BonaerenseRegion. The parasite species that contributed most to theseparation of the samples were generally those identifiedas biological markers in previous studies in the area.Patterns of distance decay in similarity among communitiesin R. brasiliensis were found; with dissimilarity valuesbetween distant localities being higher than between closeones. Whereas the composition and structure of parasiteassemblages in Bonaerense waters reflect those of otherfish species in this region, being mainly determined by thecomposition of the compound community, no repeatablepatterns were found in the composition of parasites assemblages when R. brasiliensis was compared with other hosts species in Patagonia